Trump is hosting the men who build artificial intelligence for lunch at the White House on Tuesday, and before the plates go out the Senate has made sure none of them will answer to a safety board this year.
Mark Zuckerberg is expected. Google's, Nvidia's and Palantir's chiefs, the commerce secretary and House Speaker Mike Johnson are on the list, Reuters reported; a White House official told CNN that Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are coming too. Anthropic's Dario Amodei is expected, days after Trump had him to dinner. OpenAI is sending its president, not Sam Altman, the same day the company halted the release of its latest model over safety worries, CNN reported.
Trump gave the day its first headline earlier. Launching the government's new AI website Tuesday morning, he ruled out any joint AI venture with China. "If we do that, we're going to be giving a lot of secrets that we have that they would want to have," he said. "We're leading now over China and everyone else, and I want to keep it that way." A week ago his summit with Xi produced an AI dialogue, November talks and a hotline for AI incidents.
In the Senate, Mark Warner and two Democratic colleagues went to the floor with the Artificial Intelligence Risk Management and Security Act and asked for unanimous consent. Ted Cruz, who runs the Commerce Committee, objected. Their bill would have built a permanent AI Safety Board inside the Commerce Department and forced the companies on Trump's guest list to hand over new models 45 days before release. Cruz said it gave the executive branch too much power over private AI companies. He and the Democrats' lead negotiator both told Semafor the bipartisan talks have stalled; nothing moves before the election. "I'm frustrated by that," Cruz said.
